When B.C.'s watchdog for Children and Youth said last week that a government case management system for child welfare is so badly flawed that it puts kids at risk, a collective wave of déjà vu likely swept through the public education system.
The frustrations that front-line social workers are expressing over the $180 million integrated case management (ICM) system designed by Oracle Corporation Canada Inc. for the B.C. government are similar to those teachers have expressed over BCeSIS – a $100 million student record management system that is so badly flawed it is to be scrapped.
Children and Family Development Minister Mary McNeil announced last week an additional $12 million will be spent to provide training for front-line workers using the Oracle ICM.
That would bring the total price tag for the two glitchy systems to $292 million. That's not counting what the government will have to spend to replace BCeSIS (British Columbia enterprise Student Information System).
Users describe the Oracle ICM program as byzantine. A monthly report card check by social services workers that took seven clicks under the previous system now takes 21, said Doug Kinna, chairman of social information and health for the BC Government Employees Union (BCGEU). He said one of his members has filed a claim with the Workers Compensation Board for a repetitive strain injury as a result of using the program.
Oracle declined an interview request to explain why its program is so difficult for front-line workers to use.
Government documents that were part of a request for proposals in 2007 indicate that previous experience with social services case management was not a prerequisite for bidders.
In December 2007, one applicant responding to an RFP wrote to ask if any experience was needed in the area of case management, to which the government responded it wasn't.
"In other words, somebody even asked, 'Do we have to have experience in this area?' and the government said no," said Carole James, the NDP's critic for social development. "I think that reinforces the due diligence piece that needs to be looked at in government.
The Oracle Siebel system is an "off-the-shelf" customer relations management program for business. It was not designed for case management, Kinna said.
"They go out and buy these programs and then try and shoehorn the business into the limitations of the program. The software needs are defined by the business that you do, and in both cases they've done it the other way a round."
James believes a common problem in both the BCeSIS and Oracle ICM cases is that neither the responsible ministries nor the software developers worked with front-line workers in the early design phase to understand what they needed or at the rollout stage to ensure they were properly trained. That is a common problem plaguing many large-scale systems, said Robyn Quinn, director of communications at Priologic, a Victoria-based enterprise software developer.
"It happens more frequently than people want to talk about," said Quinn, who is a certified change management consultant. "There have been projects that were heavily invested in [with] years and years of rollouts, and then it fails because they created something that they didn't bring the user in on.
"The part that gets lost along the way is the people side of it. That takes more than just having a big launch party and giving everybody branded mousepads. People can help you make adjustments if you bring them in early. Bring them in very, very early in the game so they can tell you 'This is not going to work.'" •
